Alana Hall recuperates at her Airdrie, Alta., home after slipping on ice and breaking her leg while delivering mail in Calgary. She was rescued by roofers working on a home nearby. (Darren Makowichuk/QMI Agency)

Michael Platt, Calgary Sun

That was enough to stop Alana Hall, just days into her job as a letter carrier for Canada Post.

She certainly wasn’t the first Calgarian to slip in a winter marked by endless layers of frozen precipitation, but Hall’s spill may have caused one of the most frightening injuries of the winter.

“My leg didn’t have a pulse,” said Hall, now recovering at home in Airdrie.

That mangled leg — the break left it facing in the wrong direction — is now encased in a cast, and Hall’s winter is over, at least as walking around goes.

But having a leg to heal at all is something Hall is thanking three Calgary roofers for: She says without the trio’s alertness and immediate willingness to help, there’s a chance she might have lost the limb to lack of circulation.

“I got out of my vehicle, and then I slipped on the road as I was going to the sidewalk,” said Hall.

“I felt my leg break as I fell — and then I was on the ground, and couldn’t move.”

It was March 12, just three weeks into her career as a letter carrier, and only Hall’s third day doing the route solo.

She was in the northwest community of Hamptons, a place where in the middle of the day, in the middle of winter, the streets were deserted and all houses were sealed to the cold.

With her cellphone out of reach in the vehicle, it meant shouting for help was Hall’s only hope — but as the postie cried out in agony, she knew there was no chance anyone would hear her.

“It wasn’t the kind of area where people are outside,” she said.

Or so she thought.

As luck would have it, Hall wasn’t the only person working outside on a day where temperatures hovered around -7C.

Not far away, hammering away above the street, were three men from Epic Roofing — and between the sound of their tools, one of them realized a woman was calling for help.

“We were on the roof, working on the eavestrough, when we heard a lady calling, ‘Help me, I broke my leg,’ ” said Melvin Laureano, foreman of the small crew.